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ORANGE, ICED (another way)
Whisk the white of an egg to a firm froth, and mix with it eight ounces of pounded and sifted sugar; beat the mixture thoroughly for ten or fifteen minutes. Peel three or four large sound oranges; take away the white pith without breaking the skin of the fruit, put a double thread through each orange, which must be immersed singly in the sugar. Fasten the oranges by the thread to a long piece of stick, hang them in a very cool oven, and leave them until they are quite dry, but they must not be allowed to acquire any colour. Arrange the balls on a folded napkin, and garnish with springs of myrtle. Time, about one hour to dry. Probable cost of oranges, 1d. each. Sufficient for three or four persons.
This is royal icing applied to whole peeled oranges, then dried rather than baked. Nearly everything depends on keeping the fruit intact and the coating white.
- The hinge: no colour, no heat"a very cool oven" here means barely warm: the lowest setting of a modern oven, perhaps with the door propped, or a dehydrator on a low setting. The recipe gives no figure, so any number is a guess; the test is the one it states, that the coating dry without taking any colour. Real heat will colour the sugar and draw juice through the coating.
- Peeling without breaking the fruitCut away peel and pith with a sharp knife in strips, following the curve, so the segment membranes stay sealed. A single nick lets juice bleed into the icing and the whole ball goes translucent and sticky.
- Pounded and sifted sugarThis is confectioners' or icing sugar. Eight ounces is roughly two cups, sifted; with one egg white it gives a stiff royal icing that just falls from the spoon.
- Beating timeTen to fifteen minutes was hand-beating with a whisk. A few minutes in a stand mixer will do much the same work; beat to a smooth, glossy icing rather than to a clock, as overbeating makes it porous and dull.
- Raw egg whiteThe icing is never cooked, only dried. Use pasteurised egg white or meringue powder, particularly if serving children, the elderly or anyone pregnant.
- Rigging the orangesThe doubled thread and stick amount to a drying rack. A wooden spoon or dowel laid across a deep roasting tin, with the oranges hanging clear of each other and of the sides, does the job; set a tray underneath for drips.
- Real drying timeOne hour is optimistic for anything but a very thin coat. Allow longer at a low temperature, drying until the shell is hard, and dip and dry a second time if you want an opaque white shell.
- MyrtleThe sprigs are garnish only, in the Victorian manner of dressing a dessert dish. Any glossy evergreen serves; bay or lemon leaves are easier to find and, like the myrtle, are not meant to be eaten.
- ServingThree or four oranges for three or four people suggests one each at the end of dinner. The recipe says nothing about how they were opened or served, though fruit knives and finger bowls would be a sensible provision.
This belongs among the dessert-course conceits of the late Victorian table, where the object was as much display as eating: fruit disguised, sugared, arranged on a folded napkin and framed with greenery. Royal icing — beaten egg white and sifted sugar — was the standard confectioner's coating of the period, used on cakes, sweetmeats and, as here, on whole fruit, and its virtue was that it dried to a hard, matt, brilliant white. The costing tells its own story: an orange at a penny was cheap enough, in a period when Mediterranean fruit is generally said to have arrived by steamer in quantity, that a household could afford to hide it entirely under sugar for the sake of the effect. The instruction that the balls "must not be allowed to acquire any colour" is the whole point — a faintly toasted shell would have given the trick away.